The House this week approved several bills dealing with homeland security, including a measure authorizing the Office of Bombing Prevention and another creating an Appeals and Redress Office to assist travelers who are prevented from boarding a commercial aircraft flight because they are wrongly identified as a threat when screened against a terrorist watch list.
The Office of Bombing Prevention already exists within the Department of Homeland Security but the bill is meant to ensure that the Obama Administration continues work on developing and implementing a strategy to prevent and prepare for bombing attacks by terrorists in the United States.
“IED attacks are one of the cheapest, easiest and most popular tactics used by al Qaeda and like-minded terrorist groups all over the world,” Rep. Peter King (D-N.Y.), sponsor of H.R. 549, said in a statement. “The Office of Bombing Prevention gives DHS the resources to reduce the threat of these homemade bombs, used far too often against our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, being used in one of our nation’s cities.”
King’s bill also calls for DHS to work with state, local and tribal governments to assess the capabilities of bomb squads across the country, promote information sharing and develop new technology to use against bomb attacks. The bill was approved by a voice vote.
The Office of Appeals and Redress, which is authorized in H.R. 559, would establish a cleared list of individuals who have been misidentified as someone on a terrorist watch list. DHS already has a program called the Travel Redress Inquiry Program to help travellers who have been mistakenly identified as terrorists on no fly lists. The Transportation Security Administration’s new Secure Flight program, which transfers responsibility for passenger name checking from the airlines to the agency, is supposed to prevent watch list name confusion. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) and approved by a vote of 413-3.
The House also approved The Reducing Over-Classification Act of 2009 (H.R. 553), which calls for DHS to prevent the over-classification of information related to homeland security, including terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The bill points to the 9/11Commission’s report cautioning against the over-classification of information by the federal government because of the limits it puts on the timely sharing of information. The bill says over-classification has worsened in the past seven years. H.R. 553 was sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and approved by voice vote.